Albanian-born artist beautifies church interior with his special style of icons

Monday

Jan 28, 2013 at 6:00 AM

By Richard Duckett TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

Entering an Orthodox church to the sight of icons illuminating the interior with depictions of Christ, Mary, archangels, saints and such events as the Nativity and Resurrection has been described as seeing “theology in color.”

Another way of talking about the beautiful Byzantine images is to say that you are seeing “windows into heaven,” said the Rev. Timothy Cremeens of St. Mary’s Assumption Albanian Church, 535 Salisbury St.

“It’s a really magnificent thing,” said longtime church member George Laska about the 169 icons on the walls, ceiling and inside dome of the relatively small church, as well as another 40 inside its St. Peter and St. Paul Chapel.

What also makes standing inside St. Mary’s a remarkable experience is that all of the work has been done by one person, iconographer Dhimitri Cika, who is originally from Albania, and now lives in Worcester.

“We’re a very unique community in this country,” said Rev. Cremeens. “I’m trying to think of anyone else who has one iconographer (besides possibly a family-owned church in Alabama), and I can’t think of anybody.”

So how does Mr. Cika feel when he comes to St. Mary’s as a church member?

“Every time I see the church I don’t believe I did it,” he replied. As he tried to express his feelings in English and then Albanian, Mr. Laska helped translate. “When he comes in and he’s alone he’s frightened by what he has done,” Mr. Laska said. On a lighter note, Mr. Cika recalled that a former professor of his in Albania visited the church on one occasion. “And he couldn’t believe he (Mr. Cika) did this all himself,” Mr. Laska said.

But as a religious iconographer, Mr. Cika, who learned his craft in Albania, does believe he gets some help.

Asked if he feels a spiritual hand guiding him in his iconographic work, Mr. Cika replied, “Yes.”

St. Mary’s, which has about 400 families as members, will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2015, said church secretary Lisa Gregory.

Last year, it marked 30 years at its building on Salisbury Street, where the ornate church can seat about 350 people. After St. Mary’s moved, Mr. Laska said, church members held an extensive fundraising campaign for an icon project.

Mr. Cika, 57, married with a daughter, came to the United States 14 years ago and moved to Worcester two years later. Working from a studio in the church, he began creating icons for St. Mary’s in 2000. Most of the iconography in the church was finished after seven years, with the chapel taking another two years. Still, there is some unfinished business. Mr. Cika will soon do glasswork at an entrance to the church. He said he can also envision about five or six more icons for the inside of the church itself.

Mr. Cika also has done extensive iconography at Holy Trinity Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Worcester, and works as an artist in other media.

But at St. Mary’s he is called an iconographer. “We don’t call them painters. These are religious icons,” Ms. Gregory said.

Rev. Cremeens said the main purpose of icons in a church is theological. “We don’t call this decorating the church. We don’t even call it religious art.”

The prototypical icon is the Virgin Mary holding her son, he said. “The theology is that we can have a picture of Christ because he became incarnate as a human being, so God can now be pictured.” That concept, in turn, extends to icons of saints. “All the icons are friends of God because they are spiritually associated with him.”

Rev. Cremeens referred to a passage from the Book of Hebrews to illustrate his point. “We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who we believe are present with us in the Holy Spirit.”

The images of the icons surrounding worshippers in the church have a certain stylized Byzantine look, and there are principles which have to be followed. Nevertheless, “each iconographer brings his own style to it,” Rev. Cremeens said.

“He does not copy. It’s his own,” Mr. Laska said of Mr. Cika’s iconography.

One of Mr. Cika’s distinctive approaches at St. Mary’s has included giving each icon at least a 6-inch border and margin so it is not directly touching the edge of a wall or another icon.

The effect as a person takes in the sight of the icons is of “a different atmosphere. More aesthetical,” Mr. Cika said.

He noted that a religious Byzantine iconographer follows certain “laws,” including taking Communion for three days before starting on a new icon. “It’s very, very important,” he said.

Many of the icons were painted on canvas in the studio of the church and then taken to be placed on the church walls. The colors are “the best pigment; not acrylic.” The ceiling, however, required setting up scaffolding, with a second layer of scaffolding to get inside the dome.

The colors of the inner circle of the dome are a gradient of four shades of blue, from light blue in the outside to dark blue, and then a gold center. Three haloed figures are depicted in the inner circle — Christ, and an angel on either side of him.

“I watched him every day he would do that,” Mr. Laska said. There were many aspects of his work to admire. “He can do so many different things. He’s educated and he knows his religion back and forth. And his talent.”